1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle warning system for exerting tactile information such as vibration or pressure on a driver when notifying the driver of an approaching obstacle or guiding the driver to a destination by connection with a car navigation system.
2. Prior Art
The conventional system for warning a driver of an approaching obstacle through detection of an obstacle is disclosed in Japanese Application Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Hei 9-164858 (Patent Document 1). The system described in Patent Document 1 is equipped with a sensor for detecting the status of an object to be detected and a plurality of vibrators installed on a vehicle part in contact with a driver. These vibrators issue a warning with vibration and exert the vibration on the driver to notify contents of the warning to the driver. The selection of some vibrators to be actuated or timing of driving the vibrators is controlled according to the result of detection by the sensor.
The conventional system that uses vibration to notify approach of an obstacle including another vehicle from all directions (right/left and back/forth directions) is disclosed in Japanese Application Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-225877 (Patent Document 2). The system shown in Patent Document 2 contains a plurality of obstacle detecting sensors, a pair of vibrators provided on a seat cushion with a left-right arrangement, and a vibrator provided on the back seat. It is designed to actuate the corresponding vibrators out of all vibrators according to the direction of obstacle detection.